Hope remains despite deadly year for whooping cranes in Louisiana

Updated 11:15 am, Monday, January 9, 2012

This young whooper is at the White Lake Wildlife Conservation Area in Gueydan, La.

This young whooper is at the White Lake Wildlife Conservation Area in Gueydan, La.

Photo: Brett Coomer

Hope remains despite deadly year for whooping cranes in Louisiana

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Two whooping cranes had come to a rice paddy in southwest Louisiana in search of easy food and abundant water amid a dry spell last October. Instead the majestic birds found a violent death.

State officials say two teens are suspected of shooting and killing the cranes from a truck, an incident that has cast a pall over the first year of an ambitious effort to reintroduce the critically endangered species to its historic breeding grounds in the marshy vastness of coastal Louisiana.

Only three of the 10 juvenile cranes reared in captivity and released into the wild nearly a year ago have survived. The death rate is higher than state and federal wildlife managers expected, and they point to the shooting as the primary culprit.

Despite the rough start, state officials are moving forward with plans to bring more cranes to the White Lake area, about 40 miles southeast of Lake Charles. They released a second group of 16 young birds into the marshes in late December.

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Biologists see the state's wetlands as the best chance to establish a new population of whooping cranes in the wild and to improve the odds for the long-term survival of the tallest North American bird.

Today, there are about 600 whooping cranes worldwide, including a wild, migratory flock of 300 that winters on the marshes of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge near Corpus Christi. A second group of about 100 cranes travels between Wisconsin and Florida with ultralight planes as guides.

Officials want three distinct groups of cranes because the Aransas flock is at risk. The wintering grounds are vulnerable to rising seas, storms and chemical spills, while drought and diversions of water for growing cities have increased the marshes' salinity, killing the crabs the cranes eat.

An ideal location

Louisiana was home to whooping cranes until 1950. With the species near extinction, biologists removed the last one from the area for its protection.

Experts attribute the species' decline in the state to hunting activity, flooding and the conversion of tall-grass prairies into rice fields. Still, they see the area as an ideal place for the birds because of its remoteness and abundant fresh water.

Whooping cranes, which stand 5 feet tall with a white body, black wing tips and a red crown, are reclusive and fiercely stubborn. Each demands a square mile around its nest to itself.

Wildlife managers said they understood the risks of returning the cranes to the area and classified the flock as experimental and not essential to the survival of the species.

Still, the project's first year will end with more deaths than expected. Two cranes appear to have been eaten by a predator, another two are presumed dead and a fifth was euthanized because of a respiratory infection.

Louisiana wildlife agents have charged two boys in the shooting deaths in Jefferson Davis Parish, alleging they took non-game birds outside of hunting season, said Bo Boehringer, a spokesman for the state's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

The cranes died in a rice field, yards apart, said Zimorski, the state biologist. A third crane was seen with them days before the shooting, but its whereabouts are not known despite being equipped with a tracking device and it is presumed dead.

Zimorski said the cranes had surprised scientists and wildlife managers by ranging into the agricultural fields and crawfish ponds north of the conservation area where they were released.

While the cranes can find food and water in those places, there are concerns about whether the birds and people can occupy the same ground, as seen with the shooting.

"Being closer to people puts them at additional risk," Zimorski said.

Chicks in 3 to 5 years

She said the second group of the cranes will be managed in roughly the same way, but with fewer human intrusions into and around the pen where the birds stay for a week or so to adapt to their new surroundings.

Already, the young cranes, hatched in May and June at a research center in Maryland, have started to fly in and out of the pen for food, she said.

It will take between three and five years before they begin to produce chicks, the key sign of whether the flock can sustain itself.

"We have to be realistic," Zimorski said. "The first year will always be difficult, and this one is not as good as we hoped. But we know we have to be in it for the long haul."